Plasma TV Technology

The basic building block of Plasma tv technology is the pixel. Each pixel can further be divided into three subpixels, each subpixel capable of emitting either red, green or blue light. Make each pixel small enough, cram thousands and even millions of them together in an array, feed each subpixel with its own signal and you get the beautifully detailed pictures we have today on plasma screens. Get up close enough to the screen and you will be able to see a tiny pixel in action.

The novelty of plasma screen technology is the way that the visible light from the display is actually produced in the pixel itself. When a signal is sent to a subpixel it causes inert gases sealed into the subpixel to emit UV light. The inside of the subpixel is coated with a phosphor which reacts to the UV light by emitting either a red, green or blue light depending on which of the subpixels it is. The red, green and blue lights from each individual subpixels are combined to produce the final color of the pixel.

Plasma electronics

While the actual plasma glass itself has a lot to do with final picture quality it is only half the equation as far as plasma display technology goes. There are only about half a dozen plasma glass manufacturers in the world who supply the more than 60 brands of plasma tv's available on the market today. So differences in picture quality in brands using the same plasma glass can only be put down to the different electronics sending the signals to the subpixels in the plasma screen.

A prime example is the scaler. A plasma screen has physically a fixed number of pixels e.g. 852x480. At the same time it can display a large number of different input formats other than 852x480. This is achieved by the scaler reformatting the input signal to fit the screen size. A good scaler card will get great picture quality on good plasma glass. With a bad scaler card though, even with good plasma glass, the results can be disappointing.